Even those pundits who seem to want to distance U.S. foreign policy from Tel Aviv’s demands and begin treating Israel like any other country sometimes feel compelled to make excuses and apologies before getting down to the nitty-gritty. The self-lacerating prologues generally describe how much the writer really has a lot of Jewish friends and how he or she thinks Israelis are great people and that Israel is a wonderful country before launching into what is usually a fairly mild critique.

Well, I don’t feel that way. I don’t like Israel very much. Whether or not I have Jewish friends does not define how I see Israel and is irrelevant to the argument. And as for the Israelis, when I was a CIA officer overseas, I certainly encountered many of them. Some were fine people and some were not so fine, just like the general run of people everywhere else in the world. But even the existence of good upstanding Israelis doesn’t alter the fact that the governments that they have elected are essentially part of a long-running criminal enterprise judging by the serial convictions of former presidents and prime ministers. Most recently, former President Moshe Katsav was convicted of rape, while almost every recent head of government, including the current one, has been investigated for corruption. Further, the Israeli government is a rogue regime by most international standards, engaging as it does in torture, arbitrary imprisonment, and continued occupation of territories seized by its military. Worse still, it has successfully manipulated my country, the United States, and has done terrible damage both to our political system and to the American people, a crime that I just cannot forgive, condone, or explain away.

The most recent outrage is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s direct interference in U.S. domestic politics through his appearance in a television ad appearing in Florida that serves as an endorsement of Republican candidate Mitt Romney. The Netanyahu ad and his involvement in the election has been widely reported in the media and has even been condemned by several leading Jewish congressmen, but it has elicited no response from either Obama or Romney. Both should be condemning in the strongest terms the completely unprecedented intervention by a foreign head of government in an American election.

That they are saying nothing is a testament to the power that Israel and its friends in Congress and the media have over the U.S. political establishment. Romney might even privately approve of the ads, as he has basically promised to cede to Netanyahu the right to set the limits for U.S. policy in the Middle East.

And why is Benjamin Netanyahu in such a lather? It is because President Barack Obama will not concede to him a “red line” that would automatically trigger a U.S. attack on Iran. Consider for a moment the hubris of Netanyahu in demanding that Washington meet his conditions for going to war with Iran, a nation that for all its frequently described faults has not attacked anyone, has not threatened to attack anyone, and has not made the political decision to acquire a nuclear weapon in spite of what one reads in the U.S. press. At the U.N., Netanyahu’s chart showing a cartoon bomb with a sputtering fuse reminiscent of something that might have been employed by an anarchist in the 1870s failed to pass any credibility test even for the inevitable cheerleaders in the U.S. media. If the U.S. is to go to war based on a Netanyahu cartoon then it deserves everything it gets when the venture turns sour, most likely Iraq Redux, only 10 times worse.

Patrick Clawson, director, WINEP.Even more outrageous, and a lot less reported in the media, were the comments made by Patrick Clawson, director of research for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), an organization founded by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). WINEP is widely viewed as a major component of the Israel Lobby in Washington and is closely tied to the Israeli government, with which it communicates on a regular basis. Clawson heads WINEP’s Iran Security Initiative. At a briefing on Sept. 24 he said, “I frankly think that crisis initiation is really tough, and it’s very hard for me to see how the United States … uh … president can get us to war with Iran.… The traditional way America gets to war is what would be best for U.S. interests.”

Note that Clawson states his conviction that initiating a crisis to get the U.S. involved in a war with Iran and thereby fooling the American people into thinking that it is the right thing to do is actually a “U.S. interest.”

He cites Pearl Harbor, Fort Sumter, the Lusitania, and the Gulf of Tonkin as models for how to get engaged. Which inevitably leads to Clawson’s solution: “if the Iranians aren’t going to compromise it would be best if someone else started the war … Iranian submarines periodically go down. Some day one of them may not come up…. We are in the game of using covert means against the Iranians. We could get nastier at that.”

Clawson is clearly approving of Israel’s staging an incident that would lead to war, possibly even a false-flag operation carried out by Israel that would implicate the United States directly, or he is urging the White House to do the job itself.

Clawson not surprisingly has never served in the U.S. military and has a Ph.D. in economics from the New School for Social Research, which would at first glance seem to disqualify him from figuring out how to set up a covert operation to sink a submarine and thereby start a war. He might be seen as moderately ridiculous, but like many of his neoconservative colleagues he is well wired into the system. He writes regularly for The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal; appears on television as an “expert”; and is a colleague at WINEP of the ubiquitous Dennis Ross, sometimes called “Israel’s lawyer,” who was until recently President Obama’s point man on the Middle East. Clawson is a useful idiot who would be registered as an agent of the Israeli government if the Justice Department were doing its job, but instead he is feted as a man who tells it like it is in terms of American interests. The distortion of the foreign-policy decision-making in this country is something that can be attributed to Clawson and his host of fellow travelers, all of whom promote Israel’s perceived interests at the expense of the United States. And they do it with their eyes wide open.

Israel first Pamela GellerI will deliberately avoid belaboring another Israel Firster Pamela Geller and her New York subway posters calling Palestinians savages and Israelis civilized, as I am sure the point has been made about how any lie that can serve the cause of Israel will be aggressively defended as “free speech.” A poster excoriating Jews or blacks in similar terms as “savages” would not have seen the light of day in New York City, another indication of the power of the Lobby and its friends to control the debate about the Middle East and game the system.

And then there are the reasons to dislike Israel and what it represents that go way back. In 1952’s Lavon Affair, the Israelis were prepared to blow up a U.S. Information Center in Alexandria and blame it on the Egyptians. In 1967, the Israelis attacked and nearly sank the USS Liberty, killing 34 crewmen, and then used their power over President Lyndon Johnson to block an investigation into what had occurred. In 1987, Jonathan Pollard was convicted of spying for Israel with investigators determining that he had been the most damaging spy in the history of the United States. In the 1960s, Israelis stole uranium from a lab in Pennsylvania to construct a secret nuclear arsenal. And the spying and theft of U.S. technology continues. Israel is the most active “friendly nation” when it comes to stealing U.S. secrets, and when its spies are caught, they are either sent home or, if they are Americans, receive a slap on the wrist.

And Israel gets away with killing American citizens — literally — in the cases of Rachel Corrie and Furkan Dogan of the Mavi Marmara. And let’s not forget Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians which has made the United States complicit in a crime against humanity.

Tel Aviv has also played a key role in Washington’s going to war against Iraq, in promulgating a U.S.-led global war on terror against the Muslim world, and in crying wolf over Iran, all of which have served no U.S. interest. Through it all, Congress and the media are oblivious to what is taking place. Israel is a net recipient of over $123 billion in U.S. aid and continues to get $3 billion a year even though its per capita income is higher than that of Spain or Italy.

No one questions anything having to do with Israel while Congress rubber-stamps resolution after resolution virtually promising to go to war on Israel’s behalf.

I have to admit that I don’t like what my own government is doing these days, but I like Israel even less and it is past time to do something about it. No more money, no more political support, no more tolerance of spying, and no more having to listen to demands for red lines to go to war. No more favorable press when the demented Benjamin Netanyahu holds up a cartoon at the U.N. The United States government exists to serve the American people, no more, no less, and it is time that our elected representatives begin to remember that fact.

Philip Giraldi is the executive director of the Council for the National Interest and a recognized authority on international security and counterterrorism issues. He is a former DIA and CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer who served eighteen years overseas in Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Spain. He was Chief of Base in Barcelona from 1989 to 1992 designated as the Agency’s senior officer for Olympic Games support. Since 1992 he consulted for a number of Fortune 500 corporate clients.
Mr. Giraldi was awarded an MA and PhD from the University of London in European History and holds a Bachelor of Arts with Honors from the University of Chicago. He speaks Spanish, Italian, German, and Turkish.

14 COMMENTS

Bravo! You. sir, bravely tell it like it is. Now, if we could get the general public in America to wake from its slumber and realize this is all true, we would be miracle workers! I commend you for your efforts! Israel must be reigned in. The glimmer of hope I see is that I do talk to more and more people who agree with that!

After watching O'Cathail's video overview of the Kristol-Kagan-Wolfowitz etc motive and methods for usurping US citizens and institutions to advance Israelist aims, I recommend that MCS readers carefully view a CATO book forum featuring C. Bradley Thompson's "Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea." http://www.cato.org/multimedia/events/neoconservatism-obituary-idea

Thompson traces the Leo Strauss roots of neoconservatism as they were transplanted onto American soil by Irving Kristol by 1952. Thompson argues that neoconservatism is not just a "mood," as Kristol claims, but is a systematic philosophy and program; he lays out the parameters of the neoconservative agenda, and demonstrates how it directly rejects the Enlightened, rational, humanist ideals of (Francis Bacon) and Thomas Jefferson in favor of what should be understood as a Judeo-centric ideology — the elites should rule; the masses should be led by "benevolent coercion" or "faith and its necessary partner, force," to lives of faith in Bible — without which no morality is possible.

The primary lesson the masses must learn from the elites is the necessity of self-sacrifice for the center of existence, the state. Thompson explains that Kristol's interpretation of Strauss urged for perpetual agitation of the masses, and perpetual war.

Tod Lindberg's refutation of Thompson's arguments was emotionally charged but intellectually vacuous. He complained that the demise of neoconservatism would require the 'demise' of National Review, WaPo (Krauthammer), Weekly Standard (Kristol), etc., a "genocide" he would have to oppose, as a person who spends his time studying ways to prevent genocide.

It seems to me the elimination of the Ideology of neoconservatism would eliminate much of the threat of genocide in the world — neoconservatives drove the wars that cost the lives of 500,000 Iraqis in 1990; at least 300,000 Iraqis in 2003; countless Palestinians and Afghanis, and that proposes starving then attacking 73million Iranians.

The most intriguing moment in the forum came when a member of the audience asked why it is that so many of the neocons pay primary allegiance to Israel rather than the US. Lindberg, in essense, accused the questioner of antisemitism — the all-purpose, shut down debate/get out of jail free card.

Israel, and the corrosive influence of Israel firsters on American institutions and citizenry, is THE problem of our times. Bravo to Phil Giraldi for making the statement: I do not like Israel. I do not like what Israel firsters have done to my country. Influenced by neoconservatives and Israel firsters, US legislators and those whose pledge it is to defend Americans from enemies within and without, have been fighting the wrong enemy. Israel is the most dangerous enemy of the United States.

I fully agree, but the recent evolvement in the Palestinian cause is disturbing. What makes me furious is the utter cowardness displayed by the "palestinian freinds" in this late hour. The drivel on and about the Break the Gaza Siege, movments, where the hasbatasnjiks are hyping individual opinions as something else. This "game" is despecable and only destroys the hopes for the Palestinian people. Do notice who is doing what in these days, like the spineless covard, Naoimi Klein and other fu… Not only are this cowardness shamefull, but its based on the fact that FACTS are been used as an excuse to run away, point on issues of almost a century old, and whats even worse is their inability to read the truth, about the creation of Israel, by people involved in groups as Irgun and Stern(you know). And this "anti semetism" is their cover. So now we know who they are, and don't for a second believe they will not be reminded for their cowardness. And when that is said, the gloves are off, and I recommend any one to read about the Birth of Zionism and Sunni Islamism(wahabism). They are from the same source, the vatican. The Sunni rulers in Saudi are infact Zionists, pure and unblemished. They where created like other christian sects as a counterbalance of power, faith is about power and controll, that's it. Read and be suprised, it's all there for those that have eyes to see. peace

Giraldi, get used to it. The zionist coup of USA started 911. Washington is choreographed by these people. Where did Chertoff come from and chief zionists, Bloomberg and Emanuel are key figures in the new USI

Emanuel went back as mayor of Chicago, your third largest city and the center of Obama’s power base and that of his critical supporters. This can matter greatly in the 2012 election. And Emanuel’s current successor as chief of staff shares most, if not all, of Emanuel’s views on key policy issues.